I can’t remember what we were tested for in “civics” in 8th grade, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t know these things.

Hooray for parents. TEACH YOUR KIDS WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO KNOW…. My son is (who will be 6 on Friday) can tell you who the cabinet members are. Okay I admit I come from a political family and my father is a high school political science teacher and I come from a family of educators. If we wait on the overcrowded undermanned school system then I kids will continue to perform poorly… Be the solution…. But yes Duane I get your point….

What’s the point of knowing the names of all the cabinet members? That’s pretty much useless information by itself.

Do we know if that was an open-book or take-home test?

Still, it’s a lot more than 8th grade students get now, but it doies make a difference in terms of the teacher’s expectations.

I was in 8th grade about a decade later, 1962-3 (big-city public school system), and we got all that material but I don’t recall we would have been expected to know it all from memory. We might have had to name, say, 7 of the Supreme Court justices rather than all 9.

Whew! Duane, if I can convince my mom to write an excuse note, can I take a make-up exam next week?

A couple of years I opened up one of my grandmother’s eighth grade textbooks and found an essay she’d written for the class. I can say without qualification that any one of my profs in grad school would have been thrilled to have had her as a student at that stage of her scholarly development rather than the coddled, over-aged US-educated slackers they were – and still are – forced to pass along through their program. She was intellectually light years ahead of most of them & at half their age!

Very humbling post – thanks! I’ll be sending this one to everyone I know to make them feel just as inadequate as I feel right now.

The test taker got question 91 incorrect but it wasn’t caught by the teacher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

I could not name all the cabinet positions and who holds them, would have done better under W, but still no

amendments – missed 3,6,9,11,19,20

missed q 75
got 84 but did not know the 2/3 part.. so missed that too
missed 93
98, 100 are political – but he answered right imo

I could not write the preamble from memory

Yes it looks intense, but memorization is just a matter of study and association. What I want to know is how know all of this benefited the kid in his life. The main problem with America’s education is that kids aren’t taught history, and what little they are taught is written by politically correct liberals.

This is a product of no child left behind. The Department of Education was started in 1980 and since then it has gone straight downhill. I remember memorizing the Preamble in grade school in the late 70’s. I wonder how many since 1980 has had to do that.

Civics was not taught in my school for the college bound students. We had French, Algebra, Latin in its place during the 8th grade. The students that were collge bound did not have to learn anything until they got to college. By the way, I heard about that test, hence I decided to go to college instead!

I would have answered 57 as “checks and balances.”

I also would have snarkily answered 84 as “if he can get away with it.”

What is this document called the Constitution? As an aside, it took me four attempts to get the spam protection answer. Thankfully, I had a calculator nearby. lol.

Let’s look at why this memorization test might have been required: because in the absence of the Internet and laptops or smartphones, people had to store all this information in their brains. Memorization is a useful trick for your gray matter, but it’s not the end-all of education. What about questions like this: “If the First Amendment were undermined by supreme court decisions, how might that affect your freedom?”

I was in eighth grade in 1952 and we had a very active Civics program that included writing and passing a bill so we understood all the steps. I don’t know that we had a test as difficult as that one but it was close. Civics has, of course, disappeared from the curriculum even though my kids went to private school.

What does it matter? Those who answered those questions correctly created/supported the Ponzi schemes called Social Security and medicare and their children invented Obama/Pelosi Care. Have your children study Chinese.

That’s the exact kind of test I would have memorized and then quickly forgotten two days later.

It’s all simple single-answer factual questions, or “memorized knowledge” as Kevin J Jones called it. Nowhere based on this test can we determine a child’s ability to THINK, only to memorize.

Let’s see an essay from an 8th grader in 1954 and then we can consider the steady withering of our mindgrapes. And let’s not forget that there were probably plenty of slackers/troublemaker kids in 1954 that would bomb this. Just like there are now.

And I also can only recall the preamble as I recite the School House Rock song in my head.

This is pretty impressive, and I think this particular type of material should be considered very important in education. It may not have a direct bearing on everyday life, but anything that reduces the mystique of government operation should help result in a better informed populace.

It’s a lot easier to care about who’s secretary of state when you at least have a vague idea of what the position entails. Otherwise, it’s just “some person in charge of something.”

Anyone else notice the question asking for the names of the Supreme Court justices misspelled “Give?”

I feel slightly vindicated. As the generation being disparaged by a lot of commenters, I think you can also rest easily that there ARE resources who can teach kids to know these facts off hand. Parents are one, and pushing children to pursue Advanced Placement and Gifted and Talented learning programs is another.

It takes a family…

The real question is could anyone on here name the next 5 amendments to the Constitution not mentioned here…

I see ZERO real knowledge on this exam. Just a pile of facts nicely memorized. This is the kind pablum that just creates more lawyers. Whoopee!! What were the 1954 calculus and physics standards like?
-rufus

I attended school in the 80’s and 90’s. I had to memorize the preamble to the Constitution and I can still recite it. Our education system in America not perfect and needs much improvement, but if you want students today to memorize the Constitution, our President’s cabinet, then they can. It’s all about memorization. Please do not think that this person from 1954 is a superhero, nor think that children/educators today are inept.

I had to do junk like this in middle school. Of course, I can’t remember any of it now. I had a 7th grade S.S teacher that basically made us memorize the Tennessee Blue Book. Then again, it was the 2000 election year and this stuff was on everybody’s minds. Since then, I haven’t had a harder class. My Senior year Gov’t class was easier than 7th grade. I guess I’m just trying to say that an 8th grade test like this isn’t to farfetched.

P.S. I’m not trying to brag because I barely passed.

But most of that information is useless, and all of it is memorization. Sure our education system is wack, but mass memorization is not useful in most jobs. We need to teach kids to think.

i would like to point out that this material is strict rote memorization, not much analysis going on there. anybody can memorize things, that doesn’t make you smart.

Reading these over these comments what I’m actually struck by is that for conservatives it has become axiomatic that they are smarter, harder working, more patriotic, moral, ethical, and just all around better persons in every way than anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their philosophy.

We were actually not very good at teaching back then. We didn’t teach to ability and we concentrated on facts rather than how to think. Things have actually improved in many regards. Many foreign countries still teach that way, and its not very beneficial. Knowing this in 8th grade means you forget it by 9th. Its not pertinent to an 8th graders world, and so it does not stick. I don’t find this article to say much of anything. If they taught current old people to think like this in the 50’s, it didn’t seem to do you much good.

There’s much more accumulated information these days and so little time to absorb it. I think knowing how to find and analyze information is more important than simple memorization of facts and figures. That being said, I don’t want to belittle what was taught back then, and that 8th grader deserved a pat on the back for the “A”.

its a knowledge test….it has nothing to do with intelligence.

This is just useless memorization. Who cares who the current justice and cabinet members names are? I’d be more impressed if they had to list all the positions and their roles. There is absolutely no depth or demonstration of understanding in this test.

I learned all of this during the 8th grade and it was reiterated in 11th grade government which I took as a correspondence course. I don’t really see a difference in the test I took as an 8th grader and this one. I went to a public school in rural northwest Ohio. I graduated in 2004 from high school. Most people (I admit even me) just forget all of this right after they learn it for the test. I do agree however, that they should teach more of the current government such as who holds what office and what they do. This would be beneficial for those students with an interest in government and would give kids some current political knowledge.

Answer: No

It’s amazing how much more thorough schooling was back then (from what I understand. I wasn’t alive yet.)

As I go through college and memorize all sorts of stuff, usually just rote memorization, I do see the value in it. The main thing I remember memorizing in elementary school was the multiplication tables and it was obviously worth it. I think today memorization has lost favor relative to “critical thinking” but how are kids supposed to critically think about things if they don’t have the language to put complex thought together?

On the other hand, maybe at the time kids were so busy memorizing names that they were never given the opportunity to do anything with them, which seems to defeat the purpose?

Lol, this is funny…
I cannot believe you people think this information is relevant at all.
given society and where we are at as humans, this is a complete waste of time.

teach your kids something worth knowing.
this is lame.

I agree with matt earlier. While it is impressive, most of this information is rote memorization. Not helpful in the least. granted, SOME of this information MAY be useful for someone going into law, but other than that, its not helpful in the least. Our education is not lessened, it’s just different. the students we have now (the competent ones at least) can do advanced algebra and show interest in the science departments and write far better they ever could before.

What good would knowing this pointless crap serve a child. Congratulations you can name the current cabinet and justices of the supreme court. That knowledge will be worthless in 4-10 years. Oh congratulations again to you kid for being able to recite all the amendments to the constitution. Rely on that as your source of legal authority when the police are busting you. “But officer so what if im in a shopping mall, havent you heard about the 2nd amendment to the constitution? I have the right to bear arms. Geez didnt you learn that in 8th Grade?”

Im in law school and I couldnt pass a test like this. Does it Matter? Depends on which skill you think is better, being able to recite memorized phrases like a zombie or being able to come up with something new in your head to say?

We had to know all of the ammendments for my 12th grade AP Social Studies class (2002)…I know I had been over them two or three times before that because it was annoying to have to go over info we’d already learned the past few years. Don’t think I’d do very well at repeating them now, though, because I haven’t used that knowledge since I got out of high school.

Thanks to “School House Rock!” I could do the Preamble with no problem. The creators of that show were geniuses.

I don’t think I’ve ever known any of the cabinet members, and honestly don’t know why I would need to know their names…can’t really do anything to change who the President picks for his cabinet, but I sure would like to know about their thoughts and opinions so I know what to expect of my government.

My point is…a lot of this is still taught, but the problem is it’s never USED for anything. It’s just “memorize this then repeat it later” and after you’ve repeated it you never have to use it. There’s never any context for it, or any show of why it’s important or how you would use it, so it’s not retained. Anyone who is used to standardized testing knows that you only have to remember the info long enough to fill in the scantron bubble, and then you’ll likely never need to use it again. (Horray education!)

Problem is if you expected students to memorize this stuff today Republicans would be up in arms about “indoctrinating” our youth. They’d be bellyaching that teaching about this stuff is taking time from their Biology class; titled “God Did It”.

And as another commenter mentioned, lets see what these 8th graders were doing for Math or Science? I guarantee you that I could have run circles around any one of these kids on something like a calculus exam, which is slightly more useful than knowing the preamble to the constitution.

There is a place for rote memorization, but this test is simply an example of how much can you cram in. It’s much like biology classes of the same era “memorize every bone in the body” or chemistry classes “memorize the atomic weights of every element”. In the real world, those skills are useless. A chemist will have a copy of the periodic table handy if they need to look up an atomic weight.

Thankfully, today, we do spend time teaching kids how to learn, which is much more important than teaching them how to memorize. I wonder if this student, given the same test today, would be able to do nearly as well. Would they know the current members of the cabinet? Current supreme court justices? Which congress-members are pro-rape and vote as such? Doubtful.

I really do not feel like kids are missing out by not learning the answers on this test. If, like someone stated, this was a constitution test that was taught and memorized in order to pass 8th grade it is really no different than the math, reading, science, and english tests that 8th graders these days would also need to pass, and I feel that knowing the core subjects in much more important than memorizing the constitution and cabinet members.

Many people are criticizing pure memorization of the quiz’s contents. A base of general knowledge can make a person at worst an automaton and at best a whiz kid on Jeopardy. Still, I imagine this kid went on to take a civics or government course in high school where he learned to interpret the contents’ meaning and application to real life. Memorization alone is not enough to produce a free-thinking rational individual, but it is certainly necessary.

No way to indicate whether this is a take home or open book exam or not as well.

Ah, I’ve seen better. Actually my own grandma had to remember books by heart. And she had no problem with that. In our modern age, we have everything on our PC and we just don’t need to remember anything.

Talk about a bunch of trivial facts.

How about taking a look at the difference in math and science from 1954 to the present?

hold up wait a minute is right. This is a memory test and all it does it tests the individual’s memory or mnemonic devices. The fact that so many of you are impressed by this feat demonstrates how little many of you understand about how education works.

Those mimeographed tests smelled so good. The first section is poorly laid out. It should be a column of letters along with a column of numbers for matching. Any modern eighth grader could learn this stuff if taught properly. Problem is, they’d all turn into lawyers, and who wants that?

learning POLITICIANS NAMES AND POSITIONS shouldn’t be considered the bleeding edge of knowledge and wisdom in life and the world. these are ONLY names. and surely, books were used to study with. I’m pretty sure ALL kids have to take tests on the constitution and rights, most requiring that they recall things like the preamble from memory (sometimes aloud).

it’s fine to learn history, but where does it end? must we need to know every date and every name of politicians from the founding of this country until now?

to me this is really not a difficult test even for an 8th grader who has studied.

if you want to see how the public school systems have failed lets start with the suppression of creativity…

American heritage… Isn’t is sufficient for 8th graders in the U.S. to remember your contribution to the world’s history? Indeed: Pacman and perhaps the Jackson family. Or maybe just pacman and a nipple slip.

I doubt the test was not open book. I’m sure they got to do research.

Besides that, some of these things listed here were taught. I am able to answer many of the questions, but not all.

If it is true that they had a better education, then what happened?

Intelligence is not merely memorizing facts. I don’t see a single question that requires a modicum of judgment, simply regurgitating data. If it was about Russia in the 1970’s or North Korea now, people would be screaming “indoctrination!”.

[...] Are You Smarter Than A 1954 8th Grader? | Blackinformant.com (tags: children education politics unitedstates) [...]

[...] Need a way to measure just how far our public school system has fallen? The status quo cannot be the end of our children! full story [...]

One problem, the country and terms listed in these documents no longer exists thanks to the Patriot Act I and II. Whoops.

Great. A memory test. It might have well been a vocabulary test. Doesn’t mean the student knows anything about those people, or have an understanding of the meaning of the constitution.

I’m an English teacher in Japan and thats exactly what their education system is structured around. Memorizing facts, words, math problems, and kanji. The kids lack any deep understanding or reasoning skills. God forbid you ever ask them to state an opinion and back it up with reason.

Its this rigid structuring of education that makes it impossible for the kids to learn English. Its great for learning how to read and write 1,500 kanji, but makes it near impossible for anyone to grasp the English language.

I’ll take the current US education style any day over Japan/ 1950s America.

I always have the same question for those who defend the current education system with its lack of emphasis on rote memorization: Can you document in any way that today’s graduates have great insights and thinking skills and all the other things they were supposedly learning instead of mere facts?

That said, I look at this test and think about what a great test you could come up with if you took each section and asked a question requiring some real understanding. For the cabinet members, you could ask about the functions of each department. You could ask about the importance of having the military report to a civilian Department of Defense, and what difference it makes in other countries to not have civilian control of the military in the same way as we have.

For the Constitution, you could ask about a few key controversial areas of interpretation over the centuries: interstate commerce, states’ rights, the origins of judicial review, nullification by states, the incorporation doctrine and the 14th amendment, etc.

For the legislative and executive branches, you could test their understanding of the interaction between the two: vetoes and overrides, ratification of treaties and appointments and judicial nominees, etc.

The testing would probably take more than one class period to really get the students to demonstrate understanding.

Most adults of all ages today seem to have an F-grade understanding of how the government works. But they all get to vote!

I believe that education should be about learning how to learn. Stuff like this would be perfectly appropriate for 8th graders. The problem is that schools have become bastions of leftist indoctrination and early age branding rather than free choice institutions of learning.

Superchicken, what evidence or examples would you care to provide to support your contention that schools are “bastions of leftist indoctrination” ?

I am very surprised by people who do not understand the purpose of knowing the above information…. If more people understood the inner workings of the government and who does what, we would be better able to make a decisions on who to vote for in the 1st place. (keeping in mind who their allies are and who they might put in key positions ie: Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder) Kids will learn critical thinking in high school and college. These type of tests or better yet this line of education is merely the foundation of things to come. Knowing this information allowed me to excel in political theory class in college. I recently had to put my son in public school. There were 5 years old that were not able to recognize the alphabet. You must lay a foundation to build upon. No, knowing the names and positions of the cabinet members is not likely to help you in terms of finding a job. However, it is imperative that we know who does what in our government. But I’m just saying….

All of you who stand up for the “wonderful” and “creative” education that our kids are getting today, I have a few questions for you.

1. Why can’t teens at the cash register do simple math? Was learning the times tables too suppressive of their creativity?

2. Why can’t many of our high school graduates read? Was teaching phonics too “old-fashioned” and not technologically advanced enough?

3. Someone made the comment that kids can look up these things online and it’s good they are not wasting their time learning these rote facts. And I ask, Do the kids actually look up this kind of stuff? In my experience, they are much more interested in playing games on the computer than researching.

4. How can you apply information to situations in daily life if you can’t remember the facts that the applications must be based on?

Yes, I agree that the test above is mostly just rote memorization; however, if you don’t exercise the part of your brain that memorizes, you risk losing the ability more quickly later in life than the student who does memorize large amounts of information.

The spam protection asked me “Sum of 1 + 7 ?” I had to ask someone for help on that one or I couldn’t have commented.

Where is the “Multiple Choice” section? At least then I have a 25% chance of getting the answer right.

The majority of this quiz is lower-ordered thinking. Facts that students must memorize and recite. This type of information is less likely to be retained and takes no critical thinking. It’s very likely that the student that took this quiz forgot most of the information by the next year.

I teach 8th grade mathematics at a school that is deemed “failing” and I can tell you that at our school students are held to much higher standards than this. Students are working in groups to represent each part of the law making process and creating their own classroom laws. They are creating comics and stories to represent the bill making process. They are asked to imagine what the outcome would be if one of those amendments were not included in the Constitution. This requires students to not only know what the amendment stands for, but evaluate its significance in our lives.

I would argue that this shows our education system has made great strides.

OK all you people who say big deal, math is the true indicator.
Smash your calculator and computer and begin. Whats that, can’t do calculus without them? People in 1954 could.

wow… 8th grade from the olden days sure have a lot of things to recite and memorize… Unlike students nowadays. I’m also one of the universities student. But to me, reciting and memorizing without getting/understanding the meaning behind the fact or names that you are reciting is useless… Believe me, in a few month it will go away, flying out of your mind…
Therefore, i think the best method is to make sure that your kids nowadays to read and understand what they are reading… at least by understanding the content of the fact that they’re reading, they will be able to learn something. Memorizing cannot be considered as part of learning process… am i right?

The comparison of education from the year 1954 to now is completely irrelevant. With the integrated use of smart phones and the internet, it is completely unnecessary to memorize all of these facts that reduce the amount of teaching effort put towards CRITICAL THINKING. Facts are easy things to look up; the connection between these facts and being able to understand the reason things exist the way they do because of the influence of various related factors is what education should be moving toward. It is because many people do not think this way that they are so influenced by the media, (liberal or conservative), and do not have the power to think and decide for themselves. Education must not only be reformed in the sense of funding and teacher pensions, but in the way we understand the world… and memorizing facts is not something that is necessary anymore for anyone who can look up those facts in 2 seconds on their iphone. It is simply a waste of time.

The most important role of education is to look at a presented fact/opinion, and being able to deduce the truth and practical application of that information based on the tone and bias of that fact/opinion, and that is not being taught enough.

CRITICAL THINKING

Well I’m not sure about the rest of you all, but I know Georgia’s education system is the grandest but my 8th grade social studies teacher must have stolen this paper somehow. We definitely went over all of this in class and we were tested on it. Now do I remember any of it now, No!! But maybe we need to stop blaming it all on the education system and maybe look at the fault in us, we are human we do forget and in now way can we retain all this information, unless we were to have neural implants or were servants, and yes the education system is in need of some serious reform, but you can’t just talk about it, you have to act upon it.

I learned this in 9th grade. Surprisingly enough, I had excellent and extremely patriotic civics and social studies teachers.

My children will only learn all of this because they will learn it at home.

When I went to school there was concrete beneath the monkey bars, trophies were for winners, and we memorized our times tables. Education in the US today is a joke.

This information, and info like it is useless? Good grief people. If you think that knowing(even memorizing, yes) how our Government is SUPPOSED to work is useless, please, don’t involve yourself in politics. You’re a danger to all of us. You get what we have now. A government that completely blows through it’s constitutional limitations…

You scare me.

As a college student I wish their were more test like this. Yeah their are some things that are not needed to be know, like knowing all cabinet members names or justices names, but knowing what they did would be helpful. Also knowing what the constitution says and what actually is a right by the constitution and what isn’t and what each amendment gives us the right to.
It’s really disappointing to see my fellow students not even know is a difference between their rights and their privileges not to mention many’s lack of knowledge of how the government works and what checks and balances between powers are.
That’s not to say I am much better, only because my dad is a history teacher do I even have a slight understanding of what is contained in the constitution

What use is memorizing a bunch of facts (which will go out of date someday) when the current information is easily accessible in an always-connected culture?

This is the same argument as “Why should Johnny & Mary have to learn long-hand math when they can use a calculator?”

The literacy of the future will be 1. understanding how to use tools to find data and/or information, and 2. understanding how to synthesize knowledge and wisdom from the data and information gathered.

Parents, get with it and get involved with your children’s education – now!

Yea im in college and this ***** pretty useless. Most people need to know this will learn it and the rest have too much going to even give two shits about who the justices are

**Edited by site owner**
No cussin’

Every critic of this test is bound to be an idiot liberal.
This is why our nation is being destroyed; a complete lack of understanding of what the law of the land (the constitution) says we are to be. The failure of the schools to teach children the truth has left them to the wolves of pseudo-intellectual babblers who lead them to believe anyone’s opinion is valid and we are a democracy! Idiots!
Delilah is exactly right, congress, BO and his ilk are getting away with murder because the general public is ignorant of the law and even more sadly ignorant of how the US became the most powerful, generous, and desired nation in the history of the world.
Now we slither toward Gomorrah and the socialist system with it’s 100% historical failure rate like brain dead sheep. Thanks NEA.
(Yep you bet I home schooled my kids; http://www.gravesjudo.com)

In the grade school years of life, memorizing basic facts is important. It provides a starting point for future in depth learning and analysis. Many people here at least remember the test and the nature of the information. This enables them to have a clue of where to start their search when they want to renew or expand their understanding. It is not enough to have easy access to information. How can you look it up online if you don’t have a clue what you should be looking for? How can you defend your constitutional rights if you have never learned what they are? How can you look them up if you aren’t even aware that they exist? This student may have forgotten the details after a few years, but now he has a memory of where to start his search if he wants to learn more. Don’t expect this age group to have critcal in depth understanding of the wisdom built into the constitution. That will come later. From what I have seen, some of the young people have never learned basic punctuation and capitalization. I think this must be a memorized skill.

I don’t know. I never learned how to read cursive, or as my homeschooling teachers/parents call it, “loopy devil writing”

Public schools are clearly worse now. The difference is that years ago we learnt the entire curriculum, kids nowadays are taught to pass exams and their overall knowledge of the subject is pretty limited.